Discussion Forum

Nu Heat floor matt troubleshooting

Looking for some advice, I am a homeowner who had a Nuheat electrical floormat installed by my General Contractor (we dug out the whole basement and this was a nice little luxury we went for) a little over a year ago. We have been having issues with the thermostat tripping.A few times at first then more regularly till it would only stay tripped. From what I read on line the thermostats can be iffy so I contacted the manufacturer and they sent out a new one. I replaced it and the new one also reads a GFCI. It is on a dedicated 20 amp breaker (with no GFCI protection on the breaker) and I disconnected the leads from the matt and the thermostat was working fine. So I am assuming that there must be an issue with the matt itself. It has been over a year since it was installed so I can’t believe that the installation was bad. I am wondering if anyone has had any experience with repairng these types of matts and what kind of clusterf#$k I can be in for. It is a small bathroom and the matt is 24″ x 60″. Any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated, or if there is a previous post you know about could you point me in the right direction?

Replies

If you have a heating mat that's on a GFCI, and if there is "leakage" between the mat wires and "ground" (and remember that concrete tends to be a pretty good "ground") then the GFCI will trip.

Someone with a sensitive ohmmeter would be able to detect leakage between the mat wires (once fully disconnected from the feeding circuit) and ground. If the mat is in sections with junctions between the sections above the slab then it would be possible to isolate the defective section, should leakage be detected. If there is leakage and the mat is all in one piece you're probably screwed, though the manufacturer may know of techniques to find the bad spot and fix the problem.